


your tears are my sins

by porgthespacepenguin



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 14:06:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13412883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porgthespacepenguin/pseuds/porgthespacepenguin
Summary: He feels torn apart, unhinged by the evidence of her pain. He would rather face the agony booth, again and again, than listen to Michael crying for one more second.





	your tears are my sins

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers ahead! 
> 
> And some discussion of popular theories on Tumblr, especially Lorca being potentially from the mirror universe.

Lorca stands guard by her open door.  
  
He won’t go in, but he can’t leave either, held prisoner by the sound of her soft, wretched sobs.  
  
He feels torn apart, unhinged by the evidence of her pain. He would rather face the agonizer booth, again and again, than listen to Michael crying for one more second.  
  
But he owes it to her, and more besides.  
  
He has failed her.  
  
Failed to recognize the enemy as it stalked his own ship. Failed to protect her when all of his instincts screamed at him that something was not right. Failed even to take vengeance on the traitor who has broken her heart and her trust.  
  
He clenches his fists, unsure who he hates more, Ash Tyler or himself.  
  
At least Ash hasn’t hidden anything by design. He can no more help being Voq than Lorca can help being Terran. And despite the blackness of his rage, Lorca acknowledges that whatever plans Voq made, consorting with humans was probably not one of them.  
  
Lorca has kept his secret out of selfishness and cowardice rather than any sordid war time scheme.

A lie by omission is still a lie.

And in the end, a betrayal is a betrayal.  
  
Inside the room, Michael’s sobs have quieted down. Lorca pushes away from the wall and turns to leave, finally free of the torment of his penance. If only for the day.  
  
“Captain?”  
  
Lorca freezes.  
  
In the short time it takes him to ponder his options and decide on flight, Michael is standing in the doorway.  
  
He can’t help but stare at her, at a loss for words.  
  
She looks wrecked, her brown eyes rimmed with red and her expression as shattered as he has ever seen it.  
  
She’s beautiful.  
  
“Captain?” Michael repeats softly when he keeps staring dumbly at her.  
  
“I wasn’t…” he starts, then stops. He won’t lie to her again. Not unless he has to. “I didn’t want to bother you.”  
  
Secrets revealed but not discussed hang thick between them. After Ash’s betrayal, Lorca’s relatively smaller transgression has been overlooked, but certainly not forgotten.  
  
The small, enormous matter of his love for her, his grief, bared for all to see and gawk at by a vengeful Cornwell.

Sometimes it feels surreal that she had forgiven more easily his attempted coup on the Empire than his marriage to Michael.

In the end, she had had her vengeance, dragging out Lorca’s every hidden truths and outing him as the Terran wolf in a Starfleet captain’s uniform, relishing the chaos the revelations had caused among his crew.

“You are free to go where you please,” Michael states, after a moment, ducking her head. “What I want does not seem to have anything to do with it.”  
  
Lorca can’t help it. He flinches.  
  
“I should go,” he says, and takes a step back then another, before her hand on his wrist stops him dead in his tracks.  
  
“Wait–”  
  
Poised on the balls of his feet, his entire body thrumming with the need to run as far from her as possible, Lorca forces himself into stillness through sheer force of will.  
  
“Please.”  
  
Her voice is a little rough. She wipes her eyes, attempts a wan smile. It doesn’t make her look any less sad.  
  
“I find myself not knowing how to…deal. With everything.” Her brown eyes are earnest and pained. “Amanda would say that is not an excuse to be mean.”  
  
Her hand is warm and soft where it loosely clasps the skin of his wrist.  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” he says gruffly, because he deserves it, and more.  
  
“Does it ever get better?” Michael asks suddenly, and to an onlooker it would look like a jarring change of topic, but Lorca has no difficulty following her train of thought.  
  
He contemplates lying. It would be kinder.  
  
But she does not need any more lies. She’s had a lifetime’s worth already.  
  
“I don’t know,” he says finally, because it’s the truth. “But I’ve been told time usually helps.”  
  
“What about you?”

He stops breathing for a painful instant, flayed bare and left bleeding by the unspoken question.  
  
_Do you still miss her? Do you still miss… me?_  
  
She has no right to ask.  
  
She has every right.  
  
“No,” Lorca admits, plainly. Before his courage runs out and sense returns, he adds, “But it doesn’t help that I don’t want it to.”  
  
Michael’s hand tightens convulsively around his wrist.  
  
She’s crying again, Lorca realizes, stunned.  
  
“I shouldn’t have asked,” Michael says, looking at her feet, her voice small and desperately sad. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Don’t,” he says immediately. There is no way in the galaxy he is letting her apologize for anything, and especially not to him.  
  
Michael blinks up at him, tears still running down her cheeks. He aches to reach out and wipe them away, but he knows he has no right.  
  
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Michael,” Lorca says instead. “It wasn’t your fault.”  
  
They are not talking about her insensitive prying, not anymore, but she catches his hidden meaning, as she always does.  
  
“It was foolish of me,” she whispers, looking away again. “I should have realized. But I wanted to believe.” She gulps, almost breathless with anguish. “That I could be worth loving.”  
  
Lorca’s heart fragments into a thousand pieces – shrapnel of love and pain and white-hot rage, sharp enough to flay the very skin from his bones.  
  
Ash he grieves.  
  
Voq he _hates_.  
  
And if Lorca ever crosses his path again, he vows, sudden and sure, the Klingon will be begging for death by the time he is done with him.

Michael cries softly, hugging herself in a vain, pathetic quest for comfort. Before he can stop himself, Lorca reaches out and tugs her into his arms.

Almost at once she lets herself go slightly limp against him, her head heavy on his chest, her tears staining his uniform.

I love you, Lorca thinks and doesn’t say.

“You are worth it,” he says instead.

He will spend the rest of his life proving it to her, if she lets him.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to follow me on Tumblr at https://porgthespacepenguin.tumblr.com/


End file.
